Gallery Pocket Book!

front cover to our book

We made fantastic books in preschool art. They are so easy to make and can be used to keep art work, hold a story sequence, or photos, etc. And if you start from the back you have a second set of blank pocketless pages to write or draw a story! I will show you what I mean below.

So here are some photos to show you how easy it is to fold this book.

I wanted the books to be a few pages longer so I simply bound two folded books together as shown above. 

 This book is awesome to hold loose art work and can also stand up for easy art portfolio display.

Now that we folded our books we need to make a front and back cover for them to show just how creative we are! We started with the front cover. I had the kids do a collage with maps in the back ground. Then they wrote the first letter of their first name in permanent ink on top of the collage. This ties us back to our Alphabet adventures of the last couple of weeks as well. 

Next they colored with crayons... the more crayons, the more colors, the more beautiful! Finally we painted over the whole thing with a wash of watercolor.

We had to make a back cover too so we tried something completely different for this! This was really fun and I have a feeling the kids could have done this for a lot longer. We will have to do it again on bigger paper and outside when it is warmer....

We 

SPRAY PAINTED!

So, we started by placing a piece cut to the size of our cover in a box to contain the spray of the paint. Next we added a die cut letter. I put tempera paint mixed with water into spray bottles and the kids sprayed two colors over their letter.

 Here are the results! the die cut letters left an image where the paint was blocked AND we ended up with cool painted letters as well!

While we waited for our paint to dry the kids started working in their books. You can decorate the pockets, tell a story on the pockets, design the background behind where your art will be, AND turn the whole thing over to have blank pages for a new story or art work.

pocket side

story side

Collage Watercolor Resist

This week with my own 5 children we went to work on some canvases that needed repurposed and created these beautiful hand paintings.

To get started we painted over the old canvases with white paint to prep them for our work. 

Then I had the kids tear up these old maps and glue them onto the canvases to create a collage background. The maps were part of a great find at out local library. There is a section of free books that are old, etc. as you leave the building. I found these great, completely outdated atlas books just waiting to come to my studio! They are made of thick paper and really do well with collage!

 We used permanent markers to trace each hand on top of our collage work. 

Finally we used some crayons on the surface to form a resist and then painted over the entire thing with watercolors. The kids were a little annoyed that I limited them to 3 colors, but I really think it helps to unify their work when it is all hung together. Beautiful art and a fun way to capture a moment in time with the current size of their hands!

Alphabet Fun Week II - resists

In Preschool art we learned about crayon / watercolor resist. We started by writing our names in crayon and then painting over it with watercolor paints. Some of the children wrote surprises in white crayon that wer revealed when painted over!

hard at work

Next we experimented with watercolor paint some more by creating blow paintings. To do this you just need watery paint dripped on paper... then blow it around with a straw! It is really fun. You can use these prints later as card fronts, or backgrounds for drawings, etc. 

Thankful Tree

This week I created this "thankful tree" with my own 5 children. Try as I might, I was unable to convince certain little people that leaves are not blue and purple! Maybe they should be, this turned out beautiful. 

My daughter helped me paint the tree. All of the kids and grandma painted coffee filters with watercolors for the leaves. To do this, wet the filter by painting it with water first. Then crinkle it a little on the table and add your wet watercolors to the wet filter. After they are dry you can cut them into any shape you like for the leaves. And, of course, I saved all the scraps for that next collage project that might be coming up!

Tonight we will all write things we are thankful for on the leaves of our tree and hang it up to remind us of how blessed we are.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee

Today we studied the work of Paul Klee. We discussed his life, his place in history, and his artwork. We talked about abstraction and non representational art vs. representational. We studied how he used color and line in his work.

Paul Klee

You will need:

- information about Paul Klee and examples of his work to share and discuss

- sketch paper for ideas

- card stock or watercolor paper for the final painting

- pencils

- crayons

- watercolors

The Process:

The assignment was to create a simple drawing and then put a grid of some type over the top of the image. We kept our grids loose and did not measure out an exact grid. We talked about how the size and shapes created by the grid would effect the composition and how the lines created would help lead our eyes to specific parts of the image. Some students did an image with a grid, others just created an interesting grid layout, and still others did an image or a grid with a "broken glass" design over it (I will show you examples below).

Once our sketch was done we outlined everything in crayon to form a resist with our watercolor paints that were to come. We talked about our color plan and that the choice of crayon color factored into that plan as well. Some students used all white crayon and others used a few or several colors of crayon for their resist. 

Finally, we used watercolors to paint in all the compartments we had created with our image and our grid. The results were very interesting. This was a great lesson. We learned a lot and had a ton of fun. 

Klee once so wisely said...

 "Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view."

Here is an example of an image of an eye with a "broken glass" design overlay. There is a point with radiating lines to break up the image.

Here is an example of a grid over an image.  Some of the crayon resist is white, some is purple

young student work, you can see this one is more of a random resist... but beautiful!

student work

student work

Student work- landscape

student work - logo

student work in progress

student work- face with broken glass

Student work- robot kitty

Paul Klee -Chat et Oiseau (1928)

student work - hand outline with random grid overlay, warm colors in hands and cool colors outside

student work

student work- grid over a grid